How about this

INDEX ON State + Sequence + STR({^9999-12-31} - date) TAG MyTag

>I know I'm missing something simple here and I'll hate myself when the solution gets posted but............
>
>I have a table of document names which need to be sorted by date (descending) within sequence (ascending) within state (ascending). I process one state at a time and was able to
>
>

SELECT * FROM mytable ;
> WHERE state = m.myState ;
> ORDER BY sequence, eff_date DESC ;
> INTO CURSOR myCursor

>
>At first I tried doing it by creating an index expression which would allow me to
>
>

 SEEK m.myState
>SCAN WHILE mytable.state = m.myState
>etc.
>

>
>but I never could get the index expression quite right. The sorted table should look like
>
>

>State  Sequence  Eff_date       Other Fields
>AL         1     01/02/2002     ..............
>AL         1     01/02/2001     ..............
>AL         1     01/02/2000     ..............
>AL         2     01/02/2000     ..............
>AL         3     01/02/2001     ..............
>AL         3     01/02/2000     ..............
>NY         1     01/02/2001     ..............
>TX         1     01/02/2001     ..............
>TX         1     01/02/2000     ..............
>TX         2     01/02/2000     ..............
>TX         2     01/02/1999     ..............
>                   etc.
>

>
>Thanks to all........Rich